Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/197

171 THE REAL STANLEY HOUGHTON 171 Oliver. You take it so seriously, Lady Grundy. I do not think games were intended to be played seriously. Lady G. But, my dear Mr. Walmsley, after all we must be serious about something. I cannot think that we were intended to live only for pleasure. And games are the only things you can get people to be serious about nowadays. All the important matters in life they treat so lightly ; such as marriage, for instance. Oliver. Perhaps that is because people are beginning to look upon marriage as a sort of game too. Lady G. Now, Mr. Walmsley, if you talk so cynically I shall begin to suspect that you are married yourself. I notice that most of the cynics are married men. Oliver. Sir Isaac is not a cynic, is he? Lady G. It is because Sir Isaac is married to me that he is not a cynic. Oliver. How true that must be. Lady G. Now you are flattering me, and you expect me to flatter you in return ; but I shall not. Oliver. I am disappointed. Flattery is the sincerest form of imitation. And since all this was the sincerest form of imita- tion, it was quite devoid of self - flattery. These mimicries were never unconscious ; they no more prove Houghton invertebrate than a man's morning Miiller exercises show him to be a weakling. They were deliberate feats undertaken with the definite purpose of testing his strength by the stiffest con- temporary standards and of supplying his native defects. And the discipline did him good. Whatever else Shaw, Wilde, and Hankin may be — however wildly inappropriate as models for a modest soul like Houghton — they are at least all supreme masters of dialogue ; and so, when Houghton returned to the provincial middle-class material which he had already used amateur -theatrically in The Deai^ Departed^ he managed to give it (in The Younger Generation and Hindle Wakes — the plays which compose his third period) a constant alertness and nervous quickness